


(a house is not a) home

by Chrome



Category: Newsies - All Media Types, Newsies!: the Musical - Fierstein/Menken
Genre: Canon Compliant, Canon Era, Fluff, M/M, Misunderstandings, Pining, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-02
Updated: 2018-09-02
Packaged: 2019-07-05 18:23:55
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,906
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15869217
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Chrome/pseuds/Chrome
Summary: Crutchie has no illusions. He knows what’s keeping Jack in New York, and it isn’t him.Jack has something to show Crutchie. Crutchie doesn't quite get it, but he'll follow Jack anywhere.





	(a house is not a) home

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Case](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Case/gifts).



> If you're here because of my Yuri!!! on Ice fanfiction--yeah, I don't know either.
> 
> This is for my dear [brother](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Case), about five months late (my bad). Thanks for beta reading your own gift.

Jack gets back home late three nights in a row, and Crutchie almost asks but then he doesn’t because he knows the answer. Or rather, he knows two answers, and as long as he doesn’t know which one is true, he can keep pretending that it is the first one: that Jack is busy. Jack is a union leader now, in addition to being a newsie. And now he’s a cartoonist on top of that. So maybe it’s just a matter of work, of having a lot to get done in between helping Crutchie down from the rooftop in the morning and drifting back as the city goes a little darker and a little quieter, even if it never truly goes dark and quiet.

It’s strange, maybe, to think of a rooftop (“penthouse” talk or not) as home, but it’s the best home that Crutchie has ever had. Prime real estate, for a couple of folks who can’t afford real estate, but it’s more than that. It’s that it’s Jack’s and Crutchie’s, has been for a long time, the place that they can both come back to.

You can’t see the stars from New York. From Jack’s “penthouse” you can look out at the city and see the lights below, but it’s at expense of the Milky Way. Maybe someday Jack will make it out to Santa Fe and his stars, but selfishly, Crutchie hopes he won’t for a long time.

But Crutchie has no illusions. He knows what’s keeping Jack in New York, and it isn’t him. He sees Jack leave with Katherine one afternoon. The next night, leaning over the edge, he sees Jack saying goodbye to her in the shadowy dusk before he comes up to the rooftop, throwing himself next to the ground next to Crutchie without saying a word about it. And because he doesn’t say anything, Crutchie doesn’t either.

The fourth day, Jack appears at Crutchie’s shoulder in the late afternoon. It’s stellar timing, since Crutchie’s just sold his last paper, the sort of timing that makes people shake their heads admiringly and go, _that Jack._

“Hey,” Jack says. “What’re ya doing tonight?”

“Nothing,” Crutchie says.

“Come on, then.” Jack says. “I’ve got something to show ya.”

Crutchie goes, because he always goes, when it’s Jack. It doesn’t matter that he knows better, because Jack’s the kind of person who inspires hope, no matter what.

Jack doesn’t walk too fast. It’s sort of a leisurely stroll. It isn’t for Crutchie’s sake, he doesn’t think, which is good because Crutchie can always tell when someone’s deliberately modulating their pace. No one’s any good at it, is the first thing—they always pick up the pace at the wrong time and have to slow down or double back, or else they forget to avoid obstacles, skip up the stairs and then have to wait for Crutchie to hobble up behind them. Even when they do slow down enough, Crutchie can sense the undercurrent of impatience and tries to hurry along.

Jack just strolls, nice and easy. He leads a little sometimes, when there are other people to nudge out of the way, clearing a path. On this afternoon, there aren’t any. Crutchie made good time today—a good news day, which of course means that the news is bad but good for the headlines. The usual evening flood of commuters spilling out of their workplaces, walking their dogs, isn’t there yet. It’s just a handful of passing pedestrians. And Jack and Crutchie.

“Where are we heading?” Crutchie asks, casual.

“Just up towards Chinatown,” Jack says, equally casual. There’s something about his voice that’s a little off, though. The casuality is a little too fake.

“Katherine not free?” Crutchie asks.

“What?” Jack says. “Hey, I dunno, maybe she’s working?” He takes a few quicker steps so he can turn around and look at Crutchie, walking backwards. “You wanna talk to her or something?”

“Nah,” Crutchie says. “Just wondering.”

Jack shrugs and swings back around, falling into step beside him again. Now that Crutchie’s looking for it, there’s a little bit more tension in his shoulders than usual, a little bit less swing in his step.

They walk up through the familiar streets, past the World building, all the way up through Chatham Street, down to Chinatown and past the vendors. Jack’s stroll becomes less and less casual the farther they get, his easy smile more and more forced. Crutchie can’t help but worry, but wonder, although he can’t think of anything this could be about.

“So I, uh,” Jack says, about halfway down an alley. “So you know I got, I got the job with the paper. As an artist I mean, not as a. I mean a newsie too.”

“Right,” Crutchie says, even though Jack hasn’t said anything he doesn’t already know. He’s working up to something, clearly.

“So you know, they’re, I mean it’s a proper job, right,” Jack says with a wave of his hand. “You know.”

“Hey,” Crutchie says, good-naturedly. “Being a newsie’s a real job.”

“Yeah,” Jack says. “But they don’t pay us, do they? You gotta put money up front. The drawing thing, that’s a salary.”

“No kidding,” says Crutchie. It’s not exactly news to him, that the paper would have to pay Jack for it, but he hasn’t thought too hard about it. “So…”

“So,” Jack says. They come out of the alley onto a street of brownstones, tall and narrow. It’s not the nicest part of town, you can tell by how old the lights are, the way ivy’s been creeping its way up the bricks for a long time, but the people who live there try. “Just up here.”

About halfway up the street is a brownstone like all the others. The grass in front is trimmed. Someone’s planted a line of yellow flowers along the iron fence. Crutchie couldn’t identify them if his life depended on it, but they’re pretty.

Jack leads the way up the steps, confident as anything, like he lives there. Crutchie can still read the slight tension in his body, the sort of nervous vibration, but nobody can say that Jack doesn’t do things that scare him. Nobody else would know.

Crutchie follows him, because Crutchie does that.

Jack knocks on the door. An older woman, her chestnut hair graying, opens it. “Jack,” she says. “Come on in.”

“Thank you ma’am,” Jack says. “This is Crutchie.”

She nods politely at him. “How do you do,” Crutchie says after a beat, missing some of the usual charm just because he can’t quite figure out what the deal is.

“You can just go on in,” she tells Jack.

“Thank you, ma’am,” he says. “Come on.”

Crutchie follows him down the hall. Jack swings open the door to the room on the end. It’s not too big, like any room in New York, but it’s big enough for two beds, and a small desk and a wardrobe up against the wall. Jack waltzes in and leans against the desk, hands shoved in his pockets.

“So whattaya think?” he asks.

“S’nice,” Crutchie says cautiously.

“I mean,” Jack says. “It ain’t a penthouse but.”

Crutchie pauses. Takes another good look around the room. “This is a boarding house.”

“Yeah,” Jack says. “I mean, I looked at a few places, right, but apartments are a lot more and ain’t neither of us cooks, so. I took Katherine with me, see. Prolly why she’s so nice to me, thinks I’m _respectable._ ” He laughs. “Katherine told her I’m a new employee with the World, right, looking for a place to live in the city. I guess she doesn’t figure I was already living here.”

“You’re moving here,” Crutchie says. The words don’t feel quite real, almost numb in his mouth the way his leg feels sometimes. Like his tongue isn’t his.

“Yeah,” Jack says. “I mean, penthouse’s great but. Might be nice to have a place to go where it don’t rain, you know?”

“Yeah,” Crutchie says. “Of course.”

“So is this the place, do you think?” Jack says. “I mean, I saw some other places but you couldn’t beat this for price. And she does meals. Breakfast and dinner, though you gotta be on time.”

“It’s nice,” Crutchie says.

“I told her my roommate’d want a look, too,” Jack says. “Before I decided anything.”

“Yeah,” Crutchie says, and then his brain catches up with his mouth. “What?”

“I wouldn’t’ve decided anything without you,” Jack says, a little defensively.

Crutchie opens his mouth and shuts it. Jack wasn’t nervous because he was moving and didn’t want to tell Crutchie that he was leaving. He was nervous because he was worried _Crutchie wouldn’t like the place._

“It’s nice,” Crutchie says, because apparently he can’t come up with anything more coherent than that. “It’s—it’s real nice, Jack. Yeah. I like it. It’s—you said it’s a good price?”

Jack warms back up the instant that he can see Crutchie is buying into the idea. “Yeah, pretty good. I think the landlady’s had some problems with tenants, ya know, drinkers and—you know. But Katherine vouched for us and I guess she’s been looking for a while so—yeah. It’s good.”

“Model tenants, we are,” Crutchie says, and he can’t stop smiling now that he’s smiling, can’t stop thinking about how good the word _tenant_ feels on his tongue.

“So I’ll tell her we’ll take it, then?” Jack says.

“Yeah,” Crutchie says. “Yeah.”

Jack grins back and swings the door back open, disappearing down the hall. “Hey, ma’am—“

Crutchie spins back around to look at the room again with fresh eyes. A wardrobe—god, what’re they going to do with a wardrobe? The desk. He can imagine it all spread out with Jack’s drawings on it, ink and pencils, a little lamp illuminating the pages.

He’s still looking at it when Jack comes back. “Hey,” he says. “Got something for you.”

Crutchie turns around and Jack drops a key into his palm. Crutchie closes his hand around it, feeling the weight of it. Jack is holding the other one and the way his fingers are curled Crutchie knows he feels the same way, that the metal seems so much heavier in his hand than it is in reality.

“She said we could stay for dinner,” Jack says. “If you want.”

“Yeah,” Crutchie says. “Yeah, okay.” He’s never one to turn down free food, but more than that he wants to stay in this house (their house, he thinks dizzily) wants to wait for the walls around them to start to feel familiar.

“I’ll tell her,” Jack says. “Hey.” He looks, for a second, a little worried. “You good?”

“Yeah,” Crutchie says.

“I didn’t know if you’d—that is,” Jack scratches at the back of his neck. “I didn’t want to do this if you didn’t want to, you know.”

“Nah,” Crutchie says. “I want to. It’s a good place.”

“Yeah,” Jack says, and flashes another grin. “Be right back.”

Jack’s footsteps disappear down the hall and Crutchie sits down on the edge of the bed closer to the door. The walls are not familiar yet, the mattress a pleasant but still new feeling beneath him, but he can hear Jack’s voice drifting back down the hall, faint as he says _yes ma’am, thank you, we’d like to stay_ and so of course, of course it already feels like home.

**Author's Note:**

> I'm [catalists](http://catalists.tumblr.com/) on Tumblr, where I mostly holler about Yuri!!! on Ice.
> 
> Leave a comment if you can! It means a lot.


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